Booktalk with Diana Korte

Former Associated Press Mexico City Bureau Chief Katherine Corcoran's IN THE MOUTH OF THE WOLF. A Murder, A Cover-up, and The True Cost of Silencing the Press reports some of the facts why 85 Mexican journalists have been killed in the past decade with no consequences for the killers. Except for war zones, Mexico--a democracy--is the world's most dangerous country for journalists. Corcoran focuses...

In Marc Schultz's THE GOOD LIFE , what makes for a happy life, a fulfilling life? A good life? The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and overall healthier lives. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our connections with others can predict the health of both our bo...

Elaine Weiss's THE WOMAN’S HOUR: The Great Fight to Win the Vote tells the true story of the suffragettes—women in the face of enormous opposition who fought for and won American women's right to vote in 1920, a long 131 years after American men cast their first ballots. As the book opens up, it's that fateful summer. After 70 years of a long fought campaign for equal citizenship for 27 million wo...

Jennifer Herrera’s debut thriller and first in a series is THE HUNTER . After reckless behavior costs NYPD detective Leigh O’Donnell her job and her marriage, she returns with her four-year-old daughter to her beautiful hometown of Copper Falls, Ohio in this richly atmospheric novel. Three men in town have drowned in what Leigh suspects to be a triple homicide. She hopes that by finding out who ki...

Artist and singer Melissa Newman, one of the 5 daughters of actor Paul Newman who died in 2008, spoke with me about her dad’s posthumous memoir, “ PAUL NEWMAN, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man.” It was compiled from interviews he gave to a close friend, and it sheds light on the self-doubt of the seemingly cool and calm Hollywood legend who was a deeply private man living an intensely pub...

LONGPATH by futurist Ari Wallach is about a mindset that looks at a future where new ways aren’t quite here yet and the old ways don’t work anymore. Drawing on history, theology, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and social technologies, Wallach teaches readers to strengthen their ability to look ahead, relieve reactions to stressful events, increase capacity for cooperation, and even boost c...

“I feel lucky to do what I do. I write about real people, often by living their lives for a while—visiting their lives, you might say. Trying them on for size. Though there are easier ways to make a living, I suppose, none strike me as a fraction so interesting.” T.C.     In Ted Conover ’s 7th book, CHEAP LAND COLORADO , he introduces us to the off-gridders and their families who li...

Christopher McDougall 's Running with Sherman introduces us to the McDougall family and their menagerie--donkeys, rams, chickens, fainting goats--who all live on a small farm in rural Pennsylvania. This book is part scientific exploration of the lost art of connecting with animals, part vivid telling of what life’s like in the southern part of Amish country, part radical rehabilitation story, part...

Delia Owens , the co-author of three nonfiction books on African research and wildlife, published her debut novel, “ Where the Crawdads Sing ,” in 2018, the year when this interview took place.  Since then this book has sold in the millions, attracted literary prizes, and has been made into a movie.   Where the Crawdads Sing is a mystery, a love story, and a courtroom drama, but it is pr...

Private investigator Elvis Cole and his enigmatic partner Joe Pike are back on the case in RACING THE LIGHT by Robert Crais whose thrillers have been translated into 42 languages. In Bob's 23rd novel, Adele Schumacher isn't a typical worried mom. When she hires Elvis to find her missing son, a controversial podcaster named Josh Shoe, she brings a bag filled with cash, bizarre tales of government c...

RIVER OF THE GODS by historian Candice Millard is her fourth book. Known for her meticulously researched work, her newest book is an adventure tale full of danger that takes place in unchartered territory in Africa in the mid-1800s. For millennia the location of the Nile River’s headwaters was shrouded in mystery.  In 1854 Richard Burton and John Speke were sent by the Royal Geographical...

Richard Osman is an author, a well-known television personality and comedian in the UK. His newest book is The Bullet That Missed  in the popular “Thursday Murder Club” series that has already sold in the millions. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim are adventurous 70somethings who live at the Coopers Chase Retirement Village in rural England and are the crime solvers in these light-hearted,...

Patricia Schultz of “1000 Places to See Before You Die” fame has authored a different kind of book this time. “WHY WE TRAVEL: 100 Reasons to Get Up and Go” pairs beautiful color photos with pearls of wisdom, lists, and essential travel tips and focuses not on where or when to travel, but on how travel enriches us and why we choose to travel. She told me why packing tips are a whole lot m...

Kimberly Garza’s debut novel, “The Last Karankawas” explores modern, diverse south Texas.  She takes readers to the salty aired streets of Galveston where a tight-knit community of Mexican and Filipino American families live on the Texas coast. When word spreads of an approaching storm named Hurricane Ike in 2008, each Galveston resident is forced to decide: abandon their hard-won home and fl...

An American retired judge of the Superior Court of California, LaDoris Hazzard Cordell was also the first black female judge in the northern part of the state. Her memoir, "HER HONOR, My Life on the Bench...What Works, What’s Broken, and How to Change It,"  is a robust and colorful collection of stories from 20 years as a judge. In her courthouse she rotated through various specialties—family...

With INVISIBLE STORM Jason Kander has written the book he himself needed in his darkest moments of PTSD. After Afghanistan, his day job was politics as a rising star in the Democratic party, first in his native Missouri and then running for national office. But that stopped when symptoms became too great. It’s the best book I’ve read about PTSD—what it is, what it feels like, what to do about it,...

Ryan Busse , author of “GUNFIGHT. My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America”  is a proud gun owner, sportsman, environmentalist, and conservationist and a former firearms executive who’s written an insider’s view of the radicalization of the US gun industry. Busse explains how and when the US gun culture changed, that culture’s alliance with political factions in the US and...

Colorado-based  Mark Lee Gardner ’s ninth book,  THE EARTH IS ALL THAT LASTS , is a dual biography of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the two most legendary and consequential American Indian leaders. The author's research features new primary sources, including diaries. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and their warriors crushed Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Batt...

David Gergen knows a thing or two about how leaders are made. He's been a White House adviser to four presidents (Nixon, Ford, Reagan & Clinton) of different parties, CNN senior political analyst, and founder of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. In Hearts Touched with Fire. How Great Leaders Are Made he presents his ideas about leadership using numerous examples f...

“I’m curious about what went so suddenly sour with American patriotism, American faith, and American prosperity.” Bill McKibben is an educator, environmental activist and author of more than a dozen books.  His newest title is a memoir, “The Flag, The Cross and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What The Hell Happened.” &nb...

OVERBOARD by crime writer Sara Paretsk y is her 21st book in her series about her legendary detective, V.I. Warshawski. As this book begins V.I. is on her way home from an all-night surveillance job in Chicago and is led by her dogs on a mad chase that ends when they discover a badly injured teen hiding in the rocks along Lake Michigan. Credited with transforming the mystery category of books...

Colorado-based Paul Holes , author of UNMASKED , specializes in cold case and serial predator crimes. He began his career in the Contra Costa County (CA) Sheriff's and District Attorney's Offices in California's Bay Area. He led the team that found the Golden State Killer, the most notorious and cunning serial predator in U.S. history who hid in plain sight for more t...

After dozens of travel guidebooks under his belt, Brandon Presser’s newest title is THE FAR LAND: 200 Years of Murder, Mania, And Mutiny In The South Pacific . The mutiny on the British navy vessel HMS Bounty occurred in the South Pacific in 1789 when Fletcher Christian and his followers seized the ship from their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh.  In 1808, an American merchant ship happened...

In WAYS & MEANS. Lincoln and his Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War , author Roger Lowenstei n not only spells out how each side in very different ways paid for the war, but reveals the largely untold story of how Lincoln used the urgency of the Civil War to transform a union of states into a nation.  Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led b...

Ted Conover's IMMERSION: A WRITER'S GUIDE TO GOING DEEP shares the how-to’s of his trade that he had to learn the hard way. How to get in, how to be ethical, and how to avoid being Googled are just a few of his topics he discusses. Ted has ridden the rails with hoboes, crossed the border with Mexican immigrants, and butchered beef in a meat-packing plant in Nebraska. His day job is teaching at New...